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The End is NOT Near!

"In New Yorker cartoons (and possibly in real life) you see people walking around with sandwich boards pro-claiming “the end is near!”
I am here to tell you that the end is not near. Nothing is coming to destroy us, and nothing is coming to save us. I’m not optimistic—believing that good things will happen no matter what we do; and I’m not pessimistic, believing that no matter what happens, we’re doomed. I’m hopeful.

Hope, says Rebecca Solnit, “is the belief that what we do matters, even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know of them afterward either, but they matter all the same.”

- Voting is an expression of hope: we may not know the impact or effect of our one ballot, or our conversations about the election, but we believe that it matters all the same.

- A Sunday morning service is an expression of hope: that gathering together we ourselves may be transformed in ways we may not know or anticipate or perceive at the time – and that our presence, compassion, connections with others may be transformative to them as well.

- Service work is an expression of hope: when we serve at an overnight emergency shelter, we don’t know who will be there, or their circumstances: where they’ve come from or where they’re going. Nonetheless, we believe that little bit of service matters in ways we may never know.

When we are a people of hope, we are keeping faith with the ancestors who brought us to this moment: the ancestors in our own lives, and the generations before us who have created and kept vital this church community. Keeping faith with our ancestors doesn’t mean to do what they did. It doesn’t mean to live their lives over again, to make the same choices, to stumble in the same places. It means to do what they made possible for us.
To be true to the generations that brought us here to this moment in this house is not to do the same things they did, expecting different results, but instead, to look back and lift up those enduring values and hopes we still hold that we can go forward here and now in ways that make sense for this era and its future.

“The end is not near.” It means the end of the world isn’t coming. It means there’s time. It also means we’ve got our work to do always to live our mission and to keep faith the generations past and those yet to come.

Buddhist Meditation

Reverend Marcia Curtis is temporarily canceling the Sunday evening meditation until further notice. For more information please clickredlotussangha.org. We hope to resume the meditation and dharma talks in the next few weeks.